


Polyrhythmic Heart

by heartdecay



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Bullying, Crushing, Dialogue Heavy, Ensemble Cast, F/F, Femdom, Porn in chapter 3/4ish sowwy, Sex Toys, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:55:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartdecay/pseuds/heartdecay
Summary: Miu keeps giving Kaede the cold shoulder and Kaede is losing her mind over it. Tired of getting the door slammed in her face, Kaede is going to show Miu how it feels to be beneath her. Innuendo fuckin' intended.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Iruma Miu, Akamatsu Kaede/Saihara Shuichi (implied), Iruma Miu/Oma Kokichi (Implied), Oma Kokichi/Saihara Shuichi (Implied)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	1. Power, corroded underwear & lies

Sometime in the afternoon, somewhere in the hallways, Kaede just about breaks her face. She manages to catch her fall on her hands and knees but nothing stops her backpack from vaulting over her head and emptying out onto the floor in a loud, awful clatter. 

The last thing rolling away falls on its side with a _plop._ Kaede nearly follows suit when she picks her head up and sees just how bad it is. 

The scene before her is a post-tornadic nightmare. She just finally got to cash out hours spent glued to the seats of the arcade. Now all of her hard-earned presents are strewn across the hall in every possible direction. She could just roll over and die right now, seriously, how did _that_ even get _there?_

Ah, whatever! There's no time to think about it! The situation is dire! It doesn't matter how in the world a little tumble sent a sewing kit twenty feet in front of her!

Pulling herself to her feet in a hurry, her ankle catches on something - that something pulls her other ankle out with it - and somehow she’s stumbling again, only backwards. Failing to regain her balance, Kaede lands smack on her ass with a _clap_ that echoes down the hallway. 

A spit-take from the other end of the hall scares her half to death and back again. She whips around in her panic to see Kokichi stumbling around the bend, clutching his sides in a laughing fit.

“You and the floor sure are getting awfully _close_ these days!" Kokichi hollers. "Walk much!?" 

Kaede rolls her eyes, a blush pinching at her cheeks as the adrenaline exits her system and is replaced with the heavy stone of fully realizing her situation. Oh, simply, a worse person could not come to see her such a state, fallen on her ass, surrounded by gifts intended as surprises, harboring a very secret agenda. Because if there's anyone you don’t want to be around when caught in a compromising situation, it’s Kokichi Ouma, the self-proclaimed supreme overlord of all humanly evil and wickedness. Or whatever his stupid tagline epithet of the week is.

When Kokichi sees an opportunity to make a bad situation even worse, he doesn’t hesitate to make it _the_ _worst_.   
  
Veni, vidi, vici, quoth the little Julius Caesar - and come, see, conquer he does. Any story Kokichi spins - whether true or not - will follow you to your grave because everyone in this damned place is a hypocrite. Hate his lies, love his gossip, and Kaede knows because she's no better than the rest of them. She puts herself on the offense as Kokichi strolls over to her, arms behind his head and snickering mischievously, such is the beginning of every horror story in this place.

“Don’t pretend you saw something you didn’t," says Kaede as resolutely as she can, challenging Kokichi with her eyes and pouting. "Get lost if you aren’t going to help me start cleaning this stuff up.”

“Oh, I saw eeeeverything,” Kokichi drawls. He smiles sickly as he squats down in front of her. _“Including_ the way your panties just seem to fly right off of you. Seriously, who writes this shit?” Kokichi glances over his shoulder at one of the broadcasting systems perched under the ceiling. “The only thing that needs cleaning up around here is this god-awful script. Totally mindless filth at this point, yeesh.”

Kaede isn’t listening because she’s gawking at her ankles.

She slides a hand up her leg, desperate to make contact with the lace band of her underwear. Relief doesn’t come when she finds her panties right where she left them because there’s still the pair twisted around her ankles. 

Kokichi hee-hees as Kaede frantically kicks her feet and distances herself from the offending stray panties. 

Kokichi snatches the panties up and inspects them. Then he clicks his tongue, expression lulling into a bored disappointment of sorts. “Oh, I get it. Huh. Wow. Who would've known that even someone like you could be a gross, yucky pervert?”

“P-pervert…?” Kaede repeats weakly as her elbows nearly buckle out from under her. Regaining her composure, she springs up, her volume rising. “Oh my god, Kokichi, seriously! You can’t just say things like that! God! I don’t know where those came from any more than you do!” 

“Oh, I don’t? Why don’t we do some investigating, then?” Kokichi holds the panties up in front of his face and frowns deeply when an overhead light catches through a big, gnarly hole in the crotch. “These are pretty well-loved, aren’t they? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of girl-pants this beat up. Whoever’s responsible for this is a real sicko.” Kokichi’s eyes flick up over the waistband and cleave when they meet Kaede's eyes. “Aww, you look so guilty I can't take it! What the heck am I playing stupid for? I totally know who’s responsible for this!”

Kokichi’s shoulders rise as he winds himself up with his own words, like the rest of him is just the launchpad for all the awful things his mouth has to say. Kaede resigns to just let him talk in hopes he will bore himself and find something better to do. It's just a response he's searching for, right? 

“Oh, I really just can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces when they find out about this. No one would blink if it was someone like me, but you - _you_ \- of all people? The same Kaede who holds herself a step above the rest, pushing everyone to shine as brightly as they possibly can is the same Kaede who waltzes around with a pair of panties so-beyond used you could piss without even taking them off!?”

He keeps checking her eyes. Kaede assumes she's right that Kokichi's not the type to stick around if he's not getting anything out of it and holds her ground.

“Eeheehee. Nothin’ to say ‘cuz you’re just that guilty, huh? We should just up and lock you away right now, right? 'Cuz you totally did this, right? Right? Riiiight?” he eggs on.

It’s hard not to defend herself but she holds her silence firm and her gaze level. Kokichi is looking for ammo, just something to alleviate his boredom, and a creep like him doesn't deserve any encouragement. His lack of empathy has nothing to do with her. He’s just ‘living up to his title’. His words, not hers. And how pathetic is that?

Ultimate Supreme Leader of Evil, reduced to petty bullying. An emperor without a throne and a commander without a fleet, so sorely missing those ten thousand disciples now that he’s forced to walk the same ground as everyone else.

All that power at his fingertips, gone just like that. And for a moment, Kaede itches. Clouded ceilings and white marble balconies creep back into her mind like it's already a memory of the distant past. She doesn’t want to empathize, but the way an entire recital hall crawls to the edges of its seats, every throat hung in a silence so obedient that a needle would echo if dropped to the floor, waiting so very eagerly for her fingers to meet the keys of her piano - it's not like she isn't sorely missing the intoxication of that kind of sway herself.

But she squashes that empathy because, at the end of the day, her and Kokichi are most certainly nothing alike. When her fingers sink into the keys and play that very first note, the rapture of song brings the air back to every pair of lungs with it, and Kaede, too, breathes again for the first time. Their hearts are no longer spellbound by her, but by the music itself, and the death of the performer is nothing short of divine every single time. _That’s_ the moment she smiles during a performance, the moment everyone in the room unifies, taken in by the melody and then set free again by it. She's right there with them, even when she's drifting far up into the clouds to deliver her message. Kokichi isn't the only one who lost everything he had and everything he knew. Everyone here has lost everything. Kokichi seeks to destroy the last thing they have in this situation - faith in one another to get through this together. 

Kokichi isn’t like her. The only person he cares to make smile is himself. He's just a selfish little brat with way too much time to kill and no one left to boss around. It's utterly beneath her to get so worked up over someone like this.

Still determined to find some final line to cross that will push Kaede over the edge, Kokichi clears his throat a couple times and raises a fist to his mouth. Whatever he’s trying to do, she swears she won’t let it get the best of her. It won’t. Because she’s -

“… _Kaede Akamatsu. Ex-class darling and most prolific pianist of her generation - turned sick panty-huffing pervert! Found rubbing her soiled undergarments on gifts for all of her so-called friends, we’re as shocked and appalled as you are, folks. Keep an ear pressed to her door - you’ll know exactly when she’s thinking about poor, stupid Gonta eating his little bunny apples. Little does he know that his charming afternoon snack is peppered by the dew of Miss Akamatsu’s ripe, old tain-_ ”

Kokichi hits the ground on his back and the only thing that _claps_ are the rubber soles of his shoes when they belatedly follow.

“Can’t you just shut up for once in your life!?” Kaede swipes the panties from Kokichi’s crumpled ball of a fist and throws them back at his face. “This is why no one likes you, Kokichi! You're the worst, the absolute worst! You’re always kicking people when they’re down! How do you like it!? Huh? Huh!?”

Kokichi is silent as a corpse, starfished like he just met the pavement from a window fifty floors up.

Kaede stares at him, then rolls her eyes with a flustered huff.

She gives him a rough nudge with her foot.

“I like it just fine,” croaks the muffled Kokichi. He pulls the panties off his face and rolls onto his side.

Kaede crosses her arms and sternly pouts. “Say you’re sorry.”

“Aww…I went too far, didn’t I? I'm sorry, Kaede." Kokichi props his head up on the hand still curled around the panties. His eyes are downcast, sulking like he's a scolded child. “Now I feel all bad inside…I wish I was stinky and full of holes because somebody loved me this much. No one would ever love a nasty panty thief like me though. I'm the one that should be put away forever and ever. I'm so, so, so hopeless, Kaede. All I do is tell lies and cut holes in my pockets."

Kaede scoffs when it clicks. Of course. Duh. Duh! 

The whole thing was just another one of his awful little pranks, right from the very start. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

She feels like an idiot for having defended Kokichi several times lately. He doesn’t mean it, he’s just bored, he’ll learn to get along with us one of these days. She just hadn’t been personally targeted by him. He's a creep, through and through.

“You aren’t off the hook yet!" Kokichi continues. "I know what you are and I’m gonna tell everyone. And y’know…”

Yes, you are hopeless, Kaede repeats Kokichi's own words back to herself, demoting him to irrelevant background noise. She’s so over it. She has much bigger problems at hand. Namely, the fourteen presents spotted up and down the hallway.

Solemnly, Kaede starts finally picking her things up off the floor. Weaving around the room, she wonders, again, how in the world her stuff got spread so far apart before remembering where she is. 

(Hell. This place is hell. And Kokichi is making sure she knows it, as he seems to still be talking.)

“-we’ll do it your way. You know, silent treatment is one of the world’s most effective methods of torture. Lock someone in a room with you, sit across from them, and just wait. They’ll tell you everything you wanna know, works like a charm every time. But you didn’t hear that from me. So…here’s the awful truth you people all seem to love so mu-”

“Whatever you have to say, know that I don’t care,” Kaede interjects, roughly shoving a container of bunny apples into her bag. “You’re free to go any time you want, Kokichi. I don’t exactly want to talk to you right now.”

“- _so much,_ ” Kokichi finishes in a tight voice. He paints the clown smile back on and strings the panties between his thumbs with a flick of his wrists like it’s some cute hanky trick. “Surprise! These panties are actually mine! I’m the kind of pervert even therapy can’t save! Aren’t I just the absolute worst? The actual grossest?” Kaede rolls her eyes for the millionth time today with her back still turned. “Thanks for making sure they got back to me safe and sound, you’re a real pal! I’d just do it again and again and again if you didn’t, anyway. At least they didn’t fall into the hands of an even bigger pervert. Who knows what would happen then?” Kokichi lowers his voice. “Speaking of…let me smell some of those gifts, Kaede. Perverts know their own, after all. This is a judgement-free zone, now that I know all company is good company. Heh.”

Kaede is back to playing _Concerto No. 2_ on her mind-piano. Rachmaninoff’s, C minor.

“Kidding again! I have no frickin’ clue where these came from and I think we should burn them immediately! HEY KAEDE, did I getcha? I hope not, ‘cuz I have a wildly important reputation to maintain and everything, and I - Hey - _HEY_ -”

Kaede’s hand stops in front of a bottle of soda. _“Yes?”_

“I’m not exactly the super-presumptuous type, but…is that one for me?” Kokichi points with a limp wrist, dipping his eyebrows in the same overly-innocent way that Tsumugi does. Good thing it isn’t cute when Kokichi does it. A girl looking at her like that could get her to do just about anything.

“So what if it _was?"_ Kaede retorts. "I'm not in a position to think you deserve anything from anyone right now. You’re nothing but awful to everyone and I’m clearly no exception.”

“And Shuichi’s the detective around here? My reign of terror is completely discrimination-free, thank you very much for noticing! But, no, seriously, hear me out. I have information I know you’re gonna want, so let’s strike up a deal and make things easy for the both of us. Be smart about this, you don't know how many people would give both an arm and a leg, literally, to be in your position right now.” Kokichi pauses. “…Not that they could stand very well after that.”

Kokichi vocalizes a _ba-dum-tsh_.

Kaede finishes adjusting the top of her sock.

“Oh come on, poopypants. That one was actually funny. Lighten up, will ya?”

Kaede does not lighten up. “I don’t trust you, Kokichi. You’re a liar, everyone knows that. Besides, it’s not like you know anything I would ever care about.”

“Now that’s what I would actually call super-presumptuous, neehee. You wanna bet on that? Liar or not, I know things. I kinda _get around_ if you catch my drift. Liiike…” Kokichi taps a finger on the side of his face. “What if I know a thing or two…about that girl you like?”

It comes too fast: “I don’t _like_ her, I just-”

Kaede winces, sucking sharply through gritted teeth. It’s was too late before she even opened her mouth with the way she can feel her cheeks livening in a deep, embarrassed red. The deal is already on and she knows it. Kokichi begins snickering away.

“Nee-heehee! Nyee-heehee-hee! What’d I tell ya? I know things! Listen up Kaede, ‘cuz if you ask me about any of this again, I’m just gonna pretend like I have noooo clue what you’re talking about.”

Kaede gives Kokichi an impatient head shake, the kind that says _get on with it already_.

Kokichi flaps the panties around in front of Kaede. 

"Earth to Kaede, these panties are _hers,_ stupid! Man, you’re slow! Think about it, who _else_ could they belong to? Did you even look at them? God, your skull’s so thick we’d have to bounce you on a string before you got any sense knocked into you! Okay, okay, don’t look at me like that, ahah. Here’s what happened for real. I banged her dumb whore brains out and raided her panty drawer while she was in her little post-orgasm coma-”

“You - you _what!?"_

“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything.” Kokichi flips a hand back and forth. “Ew. Don’t even get started with that. She had things I wanted and I had ways of getting them. End of story. Sheesh, learn not to interrupt someone and maybe you’ll get a whole story out of them. Anyway, thanks for falling into my trap, dipshit! People as dumb as you keep the rest of us happy and that’s no lie, nyeehee-hee! Believe me, somebody’s gonna be real stinkin’ happy to get these ratchet baby bloomers back! Make sure that happens and her heart is as good as yours - unless that’s another lie! Who knows? Before I go, I got one last word for ya: _Yuh-yuh-yoink!_ ”

Kaede only notices the bottle leaving her grip when her fingers threaten to crush a ball of terribly worn fabric instead. 

Before rounding the corner, Kokichi puts both his fists up in cheer like that isn’t literally her trademark, jostles the drink in his hand with a smile, and finally, _finally_ fucks off. 

And because Kaede doesn’t want to put anyone’s panties anywhere near anything she's calling gifts, she looks both ways before she quickly folds Miu’s panties into fourths and stuffs them into her bra.


	2. Airy shrugs and she's pullin' the plugs to the outside

Sometime in the evening, somewhere outside, Kaede tells Shuichi everything.

Shuichi listens intently, nodding along as Kaede details her ridiculous run-in with Kokichi like it isn’t the stupidest thing either of them has heard all week. The way Shuichi takes everything so seriously would border on embarrassing if it wasn’t just how he is with everyone.

It’s almost magical how easy Shuichi is to talk to, Kaede thinks. Even the most unusual suspects can be spotted holding a conversation with him, staying a little longer than they had intended, leaning a little closer with a smile they might later deny. If it’s a spell, Kaede is as bound by it as the others.

Like Satie’s Gymnopédies, Shuichi strikes her with the same deceptive simplicity when she listens to his heart, attempting to read him the way she imagines he tries to read her. Anyone can play the Gymnopédies, its notes are both sparing and few. There is no key and no secret to playing it correctly, the mastery is in the execution, in the conviction of the player’s heart, and the innate kindness that Shuichi exhibits is a song that could only be played from a heart as sincere as his own. She imagines that's where his natural charisma comes from: his honest soul. 

What Kaede doesn’t understand is how Shuichi looks at her like she’s got two feet to stand on and he doesn’t. If he were to listen to her heart the way she listens to his, he would hear a melody more akin to a cat scrambling towards a bird in the window with a piano in the way. She doesn’t have any kind of turquoise hospitality woven into the fabric of her soul. Shuichi is probably too busy picking up her pieces to notice she's just tripping face-first into all of her problems like it’s the only thing she’s good at. 

Today is hardly different and her problems are more asinine than ever. But it’s important to her, so it’s important to him, so she trips, tells him about it, and he picks up her pieces by listening. It would very much so embarrass her, the way Shuichi sits across from her fighting a smile because he’s that happy to be relied on by her, if he were any other person. She knows as much as he does that this is not the smile the others get, not a blush that sears across his face any other time other than when she coaxes him into gentle eye-contact. And she knows how unfair it is. But there’s time for that thought later.

The more pressing matter is literally crammed into her bra, intent on suggesting she’s got sisters when they’re most definitely twins.

Kaede is surprised Shuichi is so unfazed by her story, quietly mulling over the details from the other side of the table. She wonders if it's a matter of professionalism or if Shuichi is simply habituating to all the weirdness that goes on in this place.

Evaluating the merit in any of Kokichi Ouma’s testimony on fucking Miu Iruma silly, stealing her desecrated underwear in her moment of blindsided reverie, then using the underwear as a snare trap to rope Kaede Akamatsu into some kind of unspecified blackmail scheme? No part of this is out of the ordinary anymore. Stupid and depraved is the new mundane, apparently.

Speaking of stupid and depraved, Kaede can hear the click of Kokichi’s smile as he's summoned into her thoughts, his ghost reminding her that it could always be more boring, and that she could always be more grateful. Phantom Kokichi curtsies and Kaede shoos the psychotic little bastard back out of her mind. She returns her attention to Shuichi who looks ready to nail the rest of the case out.

Shuichi neatly stacks his follow-up questions onto the perforated park table between them. His questions are meant only to be surgical in nature but still fall from his mouth as three fatal mistakes: “Do they look like her size? Can you imagine her in them? Do they smell like her?” 

A moment passes while they look at each other dumbly. Then Kaede’s spit-take nearly ejects Shuichi’s spine out of his body.

Shuichi sways in shock, his higher processing knocked into the watery abyss of a magic eight-ball. The dice floats to the top and writes his obituary in ten words or less. _The stars say you are incompetent and an idiot_ and Shuichi hits the table with a force of two tons. The sound of the table cracking in half is almost loud enough to transcend the plane of hyperbole.

“Shuichi…Shuichi, come on,” Kaede laughs. She shakes Shuichi by the shoulder. Shuichi doesn’t respond, lying motionless over the tabletop. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” She laughs again. “Seriously, Shuichi, come on. You know I’m not laughing at you. Come on.”

Shuichi enters rigor mortis.

Lacking the physical strength to pry a very embarrassed Shuichi off of the table, Kaede resorts to her secret weapon. Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? Kaede scoots herself around the table to his side of the bench. Shuichi reflexively inches away sensing that she's gotten closer but he isn't fast enough. Shuichi is instantly jumping around and talking like nothing ever happened, barking out _stop, stop, stop_ , _stop, stop! Kaede, p-p-please stop! I-I’m so ticklish…!_

Still giggling, Kaede loops her fingers through the grating playfully like her hands just got put in jail for their crimes. Shuichi falls into his cupped hands and huffs.

And huffs. And huffs.

Kaede bumps shoulders with him, kicking her feet innocently. Shuichi’s wrists fall open onto the table, limp as a marionette who’s puppeteer up and quit on the spot. He looks like he's lost years off of his life. 

Kaede might feel guiltier about torturing Shuichi this was if Shuichi wasn’t so freaking cute. He has to know he’s fun to tease when his reactions are so overblown. He wouldn’t be a constant subject of abuse by every girl and Kaito if he wasn't.

Kaede strings out her usual totally-sincere apologies, tacking something about how she just wants to see Shuichi smile at the end. Shuichi nods with fingers dragging through his eyes. He eats his blush and changes the topic.

Apparently Kokichi was also giving Shuichi hell earlier today.

Shuichi wonders aloud if the cage is finally getting to everyone, saying he's been feeling a little crazy himself. He laughs about having made a habit of finding himself outside in the middle of the night with no recollection of how he got there. Kaede chooses to worry about that part later. She asks Shuichi what Kokichi said to him since Shuichi can’t seem to tell a story the whole way through without some prodding. 

Right, Shuichi continues. Sometime after lunch, somewhere in the library, Kokichi bothers Shuichi while he’s reading a book. 

One minute Kokichi is just there, sitting across the table, smiling with his hands neatly folded.

Disregarding the jump that makes Shuichi slam the spine of his book on the table, he chooses to ignore Kokichi and keep reading. For a split second, it's peaceful, like Kokichi was never there to begin with. Then Kokichi pulls a big kitchen knife out of his sleeve and begins scraping the crud out of his fingernails with the tip of the blade. Shuichi tries to ignore that too, albeit with more trouble. Then Kokichi begins loudly rattling off on a bunch of misdeeds he’s been up to lately. 

Every sin on his list is punctuated with a flash of silver from wiping the flat of the knife on the side of the table with a _shck_.

Every _shck_ makes Shuichi gag.

Shuichi, desperate to simply finish his book, addresses the knife.

They immediately get into a fight over the knife.

Kokichi waves the knife around saying he doesn’t get why he shouldn’t have a knife. He points the knife at Shuichi and demands to know why _he_ doesn’t have a big kitchen knife.

Shuichi states, reasonably, that no one should be carrying around big kitchen knives because big kitchen knives are dangerous. 

Kokichi plunges the knife into the table, yelling, “How’s THAT for reasonable!?” 

The image of an oncoming knife sends Shuichi into another dimension. The long string of childish insults that follows smacks his ghost back into his body.

Through a slurry of his senses, he hears something or other about how lousy stinky poo poo shit of a detective he’s been. Kokichi lists off his fingers each and every chance Shuichi had to catch him in the act, reprimand him, and put an end to his abominable ways. 

Shuichi looks pensive in the middle of his story, drawing his hand to his face like he hasn’t quite figured out what to do with those words just yet. He then says he isn’t sure all Kokichi came to the library to do was make him feel bad. Kaede prods, Shuichi continues.

The two of them part ways after Shuichi declares that he isn’t in the mood and it isn’t his responsibility to make Kokichi stop being a bad person to their friends, especially not just because he’s bored and one of those friends happens to be a detective. 

Kokichi tells Shuichi to watch his back as he swipes the knife out of the table. He drops the knife back into one of his sleeves on the way out.

Bothered enough to retreat to his room, Shuichi leaves the library too. Walking back to the dormitory, he finds Kokichi hanging by the railing in the stairway, sobbing hysterically as his feet dangle below him. He tells Shuichi that the knife in his sleeve is angled in a way that will kill him immediately if he tries to pull himself up. 

Specifically, Shuichi adds, Kokichi says this to him: "And you don't want me to get stabbed right in the heart, now do you, Shuichi?" Kaede laughs through her nose. Talk about theatrical.

Shuichi helps Kokichi up from the railing and Kokichi immediately throws himself into Shuichi’s arms, rubbing his snotty face all over Shuichi’s jacket. Kokichi bawls about how he was so afraid he was going to die having left Shuichi on such a cruel note, then blows his nose directly into the center of his jacket and jumps up off of Shuichi like nothing ever happened. He trots away, saying he’ll see Shuichi at dinner with a casual wave.

Shuichi concludes his story with a sigh. He brushes some of his hair behind his ear as he leans into his palm, contemplatively. “Do you…know why Kokichi does things like this? To me?” Shuichi asks. He's not looking at Kaede, but up at the clouds. “There definitely wasn’t a knife in his sleeve, after all.”

“He was probably just happy to see you.”

Shuichi’s face scrunches like he can’t decide whether to ignore that comment or actually consider it.

“Sorry, that was a dumb joke. I couldn't help myself," Kaede chuckles. "You’re totally just overthinking it.”

Shuichi waits for her to continue. She doesn’t. It falls silent for a moment, then Shuichi sighs between his fingers. “That’s one of those things you’re just going to say and not elaborate on, isn’t it."

Kaede offers Shuichi a smile and a shrug. "Probably?"

Shuichi accepts it with a soft exhale that pushes him deeper into his palm, still looking at the sky for answers no one wants to give him. 

They sit and watch the sun crawl behind the perimeter walls together, filling the dome with an ambient pink as it sinks lower and lower behind the tall metal plates. It makes Kaede feel a little fuzzy, so she leans on Shuichi. Shuichi tenses, then untenses, and allows himself to lean into her too.

As shadows of the heavy steel beams stretch over the courtyard in large, black crosses, the foreboding image leaves Kaede to wonder when it was that she got so _complacent._

When did she stop thinking about getting out of here and seeing her family again? When did she stop thinking about sleeping in her own bed and playing on her own piano? When did she get so distracted?

Maybe it’s having made a friend like Shuichi. Having a shoulder like his to lean on certainly makes it all a lot easier. But even that's not right because Shuichi makes her want to get out of this place even more - there’s so much she wants to do with him when they get out of here. He's not the reason her days have become something to look forward to and she knows it.

She knows it’s something much, much stupider that makes her heart ache at the beginning of each day. Her heart isn't longing for what she’s lost anymore, but for what she doesn’t have. What she can't have. What's right here, under her nose, yet so far away.

And it's not a what, it's a who. It's someone here that fills her with that kind of wistfulness of unfinished business, of the desire to hold out just a little bit longer. And it's someone that isn’t Shuichi, even if she wishes it was because she knows how much he wishes it was him. It's someone... 

It’s someone who offers her no comfort, none at all. It’s someone who spits on the ground when Kaede talks about escaping with everyone. It's someone who steps on her heart with a four-inch platform and ashes her cigarette in the crushed-up shards.

That someone doesn’t give a fuck whether she’s here or there as long as she gets to _make._ Sure, she wants to get out of here badly, but only because she knows how important she is, how much she has to offer. Driven by her passion before anything or anyone else, she most certainly doesn’t give a fuck whether or not Kaede exists. As long as there’s a roof over her head and tools in her shed, the rest of it be damned. The entire fucking world is her audience, not some basic little blonde bitch with a piano fetish. It's that someone who she can't stop thinking about for even a minute.

All Kaede can do is ask herself, _why is it Miu fucking Iruma of all people?_

Why not the soft, tender Shuichi who speaks earnestly from his heart, for better or for worse? Shuichi, who she almost saw her entire future with on the very first day they met? Who would reciprocate her feelings without a second thought?

Why not the sexy, mysterious Tsumugi who sticks herself to the wall but falls back off of it when someone finally looks her way, drooling all over herself at the mere mention of her hobbies? Who always seems to know just a little too much, who Kaede can't help but wonder about sometimes? Why does it stop at plain curiosity?

Or even Maki, who’s cute pigtails and wide eyes suggest something fragile behind that hard exterior she wears, why isn’t she what’s driving Kaede crazy?

Why isn’t it the reinforced steel and double-vaulted windows that keep her up at night these days? When did the turn of evening stop scaring her with the implications of their ever-extending stay, of countless mornings, wasting away where there is no help, and no escape?

Is she really this stupid? This frivolous, this lacking in determination?

Is she this much like a brainless, infatuated schoolgirl, head over heels with her crush, that watching the pink sky stitch itself to the courtyard in heavy, black bands sends her deeper every time? Because everything, literally everything, reminds her of _her?_

Trying not to think about the six panes of Miu Iruma’s thighs and her pink, too-short skirt, or her milky skin or her cakey mascara or her callous laugh - Kaede utterly fails and does exactly that. She’s completely, hopelessly smitten. Her thoughts are as tightly wound and bound as Miu is. What's the point in denying it?

Miu, Miu, Miu, Miu, Miu, Miu, Miu.

Kaede draws a heart over her name a thousand times as she falls into a heap of her own arms, wailing her exasperated lovelorn distress out into the empty courtyard with a long, frustrated whine.

Shuichi’s voice suddenly drags Kaede back to planet Jail School, noting that it’s getting dark, that maybe they should head back soon. Kaede agrees with an empty head.

Walking back to the dorms together, Shuichi recounts one of the times Kokichi broke into his room for one reason or another, reaching the same dead-end question as before. The one that ends and begins with, _why me?_

Kaede thinks this was probably Kokichi's plan all along. Get himself stuck inside Shuichi's mind like Shuichi's stuck inside his mind. If she's right, Kokichi would probably like what she's planning to do tomorrow morning. That thought does not comfort her, but she entertains the thought of it anyway, forming this secret alliance with him in her head, where ultimately, they have the same goal, and maybe even feel the same way, sometimes.

She bets Kokichi lays around his room hoping with everything he’s got that one of these days, Shuichi will chase him back, just like she does with Miu. No wonder Kokichi caught her red-handed. If puppy love is capable of manifesting itself over a Matryoshka doll as deeply shut into itself as Kokichi, she can't imagine how guilty she looks.

It's hilariously endearing, imagining Kokichi laying on his bed, his devious smile morphed into something softer, something more thoughtful. It's an image that feels wrong to encroach on even in her imagination. Shuichi draws the line at Kaede’s helpfulness when Kaede suggests he picks Kokichi’s lock for a change.

But something different fixes itself over Shuichi’s face. Something soft, something thoughtful.

In a fit of remembrance, Kaede finally shows Shuichi the panties before they leave the covering of the trees. It’s definitely not extremely cute, the way Shuichi’s mind visibly shatters when she reaches into her bra and pulls out a pair of panties.

Shuichi examines the evidence as scrupulously as one can while sporting a heavy blush and repeatedly checking over his shoulders. He turns the panties over in his hands carefully, like they'll disintegrate if he's any rougher with them. 

“A-ah, Kaede, look at this.” Shuichi straightens out the wash-worn waistband. In what looks to be faded pink marker withstanding years of love, _Miu Iruma_ is scrawled onto the elastic along the hip. It's the worst handwriting Kaede’s ever seen and it makes her heart explode.

Instantly, Kaede is barraged with the image of Miu lying on her back on her bed in her dorm room, crying because she lost what must be her most beloved pair of underwear, her back arching when the shame of it all really, truly hits her. It hardly takes any imagination when Miu’s bedroom is right next to hers and Kaede spends most of her nights curled against the wall they share. Kaede's knees almost collapse. Suddenly, she can't wait to get back to her room.

Shuichi doesn’t look when Kaede shoves the panties back into her bra. Kaede bolts in the direction of the dorms and Shuichi trails behind her.

Before parting to their own rooms, Kaede gives Shuichi a hug. She reminds him to lock his doors so he doesn’t end up outside in the middle of the night again. Shuichi holds onto the hug a little longer than she does and looks apologetic as he pulls away, saying he'll be more careful from now on.

Oh, Kokichi. Kaede hopes he's jealous, wherever he is. The little twerp.

Kaede walks into her room and already the thin walls are playing her favorite song. _Wait for me,_ Kaede thinks as her hand sinks into the front of her skirt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if kaede read this fic she'd call it the worst beat of all time.
> 
> writing multichapter fics is...fucking hard, holy shit. sorry this took forever. MIU NEXT CHAPTER THOUGH...!!
> 
> ps. i'm a total fucking pussy so i delete my replies to fic comments. i always regret doing this but then i always go and do it again. by this i mean to say that i love all of your comments so, so much i feel nothing i say in response can ever be enough to prove it. but truly, so very truly, if you are reading this story at all and especially if you let me know that you did, you are my raison d'etre. kiss kiss


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